Herbert F. Peyser

“ One person who was more pleased than grieved by the mischance was Mother Schumann, who harbored an insurmountable dread of the “breadless profession” for her idolized boy. Never did she tire of describing its miseries, the better to scare him off. Why not adopt a lucrative profession? The law, for instance. And so, for the time being, Robert remained in Zwickau, obtaining, as he used 10 to say later, “an ordinary high school training, studying music on the side and out of the fulness of his devotion”—but alone! In the broadest sense he was to grow up like his father—self-taught. ”

“ Two days afterwards Schumann was laid to rest in the lovely Old Cemetery at Bonn. Members of the Düsseldorf “Concordia”, which had serenaded the Schumanns on their arrival from Dresden six years earlier, were the pallbearers. Hiller, Joachim and Brahms walked in front, Clara, alone and unobserved, far behind—“certainly as he would have wished”. Forty years later, on Whit-Sunday, 1896, she was reunited with him in the same tomb, in the presence of her surviving children and a few friends, chief of these the faithful Brahms, himself barely a year from his end. ”

“ Robert did not accept the suggestion. Instead he became a pupil of Heinrich Dorn, recently come to Leipzig, who promised to be a more progressive person. Schumann esteemed Dorn personally and long remained his friend. But soon he was writing to Wieck and his daughter, then off on a concert tour: “I shall never be able to amalgamate with Dorn; he wishes to get me to believe that music is fugue—heavens! how different men are....” Nevertheless he slaved away at his exercises in double counterpoint and when the study became too intolerably dry he moistened it with draughts of champagne! ”

“ His unscrupulous treatment of Schumann and his own daughter has made him the object of much historical obloquy, in the main abundantly justified. Yet he was a good teacher, for all his irascible, disputatious ways and his devotion to the artistic causes he believed in could be very genuine. From the first he appreciated Schumann’s creative talent and never concealed the fact, outrageously as he came to demean himself to the composer and Clara alike. Clara was, of course, her father’s most famous pupil. Yet he had others, notably his daughter by his second marriage, Marie, and Hans von Bülow. ”

“ Limitations of space forbid us to consider in any detail works like the Piano Concerto, the C major Symphony and the rugged “Manfred” Overture—so different in its sombre, moody character from the romantic effusions of Schumann’s earlier day. But the opera, “Genoveva” though branded a failure contains superb music, beginning with the overture which, in its different fashion, ranks with the one to “Manfred”. The prayer of the fated Genoveva in the last act is a long scena comparing in its far-flung lyric line with the noblest vocal pieces Schumann ever wrote. ”

“ But the elaborate dreamings and light-hearted pleasures of Heidelberg could not go on forever. On July 30, 1830, Robert took the bull by the horns and confided to his mother that music, not law, was for weal or woe to be his destiny. Wieck was invited to settle the question. That awesome pedagogue wrote to the widow Schumann a long and circumstantial letter, larded with many an “if” and “but”. Having considered the problem from every angle he urged the good woman to yield to her son’s wish. Robert, so Wieck assured her, could under his training become one of the foremost pianists of the time. ”

“ Imaginary apostles of the biblical David, the giant killer, they were sworn to smite the Philistines of music, defend and uphold novel, adventurous and worthy trends, publicize or advance indubitable merit and, each after his own fashion, promote the vital and the soundly revolutionary. Schumann enhanced the play-acting spirit of the movement by investing various members of the fraternity with fanciful names. He himself, in true Jean Paul spirit, gave distinctive labels to the opposing aspects of his own creative soul. ”

“ One week later (and a day before Clara’s twenty-first birthday) , they were married at Schönefeld, a tiny suburb of Leipzig. On the previous evening Robert had brought her a bridal offering richer than fine gold—the song cycle, “Myrthen”, inclosing such deathless blooms as “Die Lotosblume”, “Der Nussbaum”, “Du bist wie eine Blume”, “Widmung”. And when they returned from church next morning Clara wrote in her diary: “A period of my life is now closed.... Now a new life is beginning, a beautiful life, a life in him whom I love above all, above myself. ”

“ Adolescence subdued the wildness which had so often characterized the schoolboy. More and more Robert became a dreamer. He grew selective, too, in his choice of friends, of whom he had relatively few. One who stood closest to him was his sister-in-law, Therese, the wife of his brother Eduard. August Schumann, who had always hoped that this youngest son might inherit his own literary and poetic tastes, lived long enough to see the boy’s talents developing along these lines. Robert kept diaries, note books, memoranda for verses and similar jottings. ”

“ His grown-up friends he endeavored to choose only among people who genuinely interested him and who shared his tastes. Persons who could not partake his high-flown enthusiasm for Jean Paul or for Bach amounted almost to mortal enemies! As for Clara, his early feelings toward the talented daughter of Wieck were scarcely more than a brother-and-sister affection, even though some of his more extravagant biographers have written nonsense about him worshipping her “like a pilgrim from afar some holy altar-piece”. ”

“ On the heels of this soaring masterpiece Schumann embarked on another symphony. “As yet I have heard nothing about it”, wrote Clara in her diary, “but from Robert’s way of going on and the D minor sounding wildly in the distance, I know that another work is being created in the depth of his soul”. ”

“ Dresden promised to be a pleasant home for the Schumanns and their growing family. The town was a center of art and literature. Painters, sculptors, architects, writers, musicians assembled there, lured by an art-loving Court. Among the prominent musical figures of the town were Ferdinand Hiller, Karl Gottlieb Reissiger and Richard Wagner. Reissiger was, of course, a mediocrity of the sorriest kind. Hiller, on the other hand, was a pupil of Hummel and a friend of Berlioz, Liszt and Mendelssohn and the Schumanns were thoroughly at home in his company. Wagner was a horse of another color! ”

“ From the viewpoint of his own art Robert was to a certain degree logical in his claims. But his prophetic vision and artist’s conscience refused to let him reject the work outright. Nor should we judge him too severely for his conclusions. After “Tannhäuser” he never heard a note of Wagner’s music. However he might have reacted to “Tristan” it is hardly possible that Schumann could have brought himself to dismiss Wagner as a “bad musician” if he had been spared to hear “Die Meistersinger”! ”

“ Then, without waiting to rest or refresh herself, Clara had to set out for Dresden once more to bring the children to a place of safety. Back in Maxen she restrained her feelings with difficulty when she was met by contemptuous allusions from her aristocratic hosts to “canaille” and “rabble”. “How men have to fight for a little freedom!” she confided in her diary. “When will the time come when all men will have equal justice? ”

“ A little earlier he had heard a concert by the celebrated Ignaz Moscheles on a trip to Karlsbad in his father’s company. For a long time he was fired with the ambition to study with this virtuoso. Nothing came of it but the youth preserved the program of that recital like a sacred relic.
Zwickau duly woke up to the accomplishments of the wonderchild in its midst. The more prominent citizens invited him to play at their homes. At the evening musicales of the “Gymnasium” he performed things like Moscheles’ Variations on the Alexander March and showpieces by Herz, much in vogue at the time. ”

“ We need not say “wrote”, for these trifles were chiefly improvised on the piano. One aspect of his gift manifested itself early—a knack for “characterizing” people in tone with a kind of delineative 8 justness that both moved and amused listeners. The child was obviously father to the man who composed the “Carnival”!
In Zwickau at the time there was no better musician than Johann Gottfried Kuntzsch, who long before Robert was born, had gained a certain distinction by conducting a performance of Haydn’s “Creation”. ”

“ How is it possible that the belief can so long have been rooted among the nobles that they are of a different species from the bourgeois?”
In the fall of 1849 Schumann received a letter from Ferdinand Hiller, on the point of leaving Düsseldorf, inquiring whether he would be disposed to succeed him as Musical Director in that Rhenish town. The salary was good, the duties heavy but stimulating. Schumann reflected that Dresden had never shown itself in the least inclined to give the illustrious artist couple within its 39 gates the faintest official recognition. ”

“ Despite the machinations of Wieck Clara, back in Germany, found a means of making her feelings known to Robert. A devoted friend, Ernst Adolf Becker, suggested that she perform at a Leipzig concert one of Robert’s works. She chose the “Symphonic Studies” (the theme of which the composer had obtained from the Baron von Fricken, the adoptive father of Ernestine) . Wieck approved. Tyrant as he was he still kept a soft spot in his heart for Schumann’s music. The composer came to the hall, sat inconspicuously at the rear, listened and—knew! ”

“ Successful barristers might easily indulge their champagne tastes but certainly not musicians lacking even “beer pocketbooks”!
In Schneeberg, a town near Zwickau, Robert played publicly and with immense success a concerto movement by Kalkbrenner. Alone among his enthusiastic listeners his mother remained cool. Soon her wishes prevailed and, though both she and Rudel were aware of the youth’s “eternal soul struggle” between music and the law, Robert made a promise of a sort to embrace jurisprudence. ”

“ What the youngsters especially enjoyed were the charades he was in the habit of devising for their pleasure, the frightening ghost stories he improvised for them day after day and his shivery enactment of the various spooks. ”

“ He had been deeply moved by much of it; and he praised the technical effects and above all the instrumentation (a thing for which Schumann himself had always been reproved) . Yet in another missive he declared that Wagner could not write four consecutive bars of “correct” music, that he was, all in all, a “bad musician”. ”